During the bitter cold-spell sweeping much of the U.S. this winter, more Americans than usual turned to the Internet for entertainment. Four out of five U.S. web users access entertainment websites each month, and this January, 167 million Americans visited sites in the entertainment category. On average, these web users spent more than 7.5 hours surfing entertainment sites in January, up nearly half an hour from the monthly average.

While entertainment sites account for 1 in 5 minutes spent online, personal interests decide which websites keep Americans entertained. YouTube was January’s most popular entertainment destination, with 111 million unique visitors to its website during the month. And many YouTube visitors returned often, averaging 12 visits to browse for their daily dose of web videos. Meanwhile, 36 million media lovers accessed the iTunes application, and 29 million surfed IMDb to look up info about their favorite films. During the run-up to Super Bowl XLVIII, three sports brands (FoxSports.com, Yahoo Sports, and ESPN Digital Network) each drew crowds of more than 20 million unique visitors to their websites.

Top 10 Entertainment Websites by Unique Audience in January 2014

Rank

Website

Unique Audience

Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)

N/A

Entertainment category

167,002,000

7:38:03

1

YouTube

110,699,000

1:52:31

2

iTunes (application)

36,063,000

1:08:49

3

Comcast Digital Entertainment Websites

33,421,000

0:53:42

4

IMDb - Internet Movie Database

29,258,000

0:20:39

5

FOXSports.com on MSN (Network)

27,303,000

0:17:51

6

Netflix

27,055,000

0:52:05

7

Yahoo Sports Websites

26,811,000

0:21:59

8

VEVO

23,587,000

0:11:34

9

ESPN Digital Network

23,139,000

1:11:05

10

Yahoo Celebrity Websites

22,615,000

0:10:10

Read as: During January 2014, 110 million unique visitors accessed YouTube’s website in the U.S. and spent 1 hour 52 minutes on average surfing the site.
Source: Nielsen NetView.

More digital activity continues to shift between smartphones and desktop computers. Overall, 198 million Americans accessed the web on their computers in January, down 5 percent from the same month a year earlier. Still, this translates to seven out of 10 Americans surfing the web using a computer browser in the first month of the year. And average time spent grew to 29 hours 43 minutes per person during the month, up from 29 hours 10 minutes a year ago.

Among web brands, Google once again claimed the top spot with 156 million Americans visiting its website in January 2014, while visitors to Facebook spent the most time, averaging 7.5 hours per person.

Top 10 Web Brands by Unique Audience in January 2014

Rank

Website

Unique Audience

Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)

1

Google

156,397,000

2:02:30

2

Facebook

122,545,000

7:32:34

3

Yahoo

121,780,000

2:03:25

4

MSN/WindowsLive/Bing

117,895,000

1:20:35

5

YouTube

110,699,000

1:52:31

6

Microsoft

82,977,000

0:52:15

7

Amazon

82,026,000

0:43:35

8

AOL Media Network

81,132,000

1:55:00

9

Wikipedia

65,183,000

0:28:20

10

Ask Search Network

59,177,000

0:15:07

Read as: During January 2014, 156 million unique visitors accessed Google’s website in the U.S. and spent an average of 2 hours 2 minutes per person surfing the site.
Source: Nielsen NetView.